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THE CLAIBI 



TRINITY CHURCH 



TO HAVING FLRNI.-HED BURIAL PLACES 



F(iK SOMK or TIIK 



AMERICAN PRISONERS. 



WHO DIKD IN TllK 



OLD SUGAR HOUSE PRIBON. 



IN LIBERTY STREET, L)l'KIN(; THE REVOUTION. 



EXAMINED AND REFUTED. 



Vjul^WJU^ , WuxKiU-v cQriA: 



NEW -YORK: 
PRIVATELY PRINTED. 

18G3. 



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to 

TRINITY CHURCH, 
so 
PATRIOTIC" IN THE RETOLUTION, 

THIS 
PA MPHIiET 

IS 

D K 1> I C A T E D. 



PREFACE. 



While writing a Memoir of Levi Hanford, a Revolu- 
tionary soldier, and a prisoner in the Old Sugar House in 
Liberty Street from March, 1777 to April, 1778, I had 
occasion to investigate the subject of the interment of 
American prisoners by the British during the Revolution. 

The following, which originally appeared as a note to 
the memoir, is the result of that investigation. Believing 
the subject to be of some general interest, a few copies 
have been struck off in this separate form, for the use of 
such as desire them. 



REFUTATION. 



" On a high hill, inear where Franklin Street now is, on 
the east side of Broadway, there formerly stood a water basin 
built before the Revolution, for supplying the city with water. 
Nearly opposite the water basin, on the west side of Broadway, 
stood an old fort, built of earth, which had been used during the 
Revolutionary war. On the outside of this fort, on the slope of 
the hill, were buried many of the American prisoners of war, who 
had died in the old Sugar House in Liberty Street, then Crown 
Street, or in the North Dutch Church in William Street, both 
of which were used as prisons by the British. These bodies were 
buried so near the surface, that by the slight washing of the hill 
their bones were exposed, and many a time, when a boy, have I 
seen their remains pulled out and abused by my thoughtless com- 
panions — as late as 1800." 

Cozzens' Geology of New York Island, page 22. 

Mr. Ouderdonk, in speaking of the old Sugar House in Liberty 
Street, at the time when it was used as a prison, says : " For 



many weeks tbe dead-cart visited the prison every morning, into 
which eight or twelve corpses were flung and piled up, like sticks 
of wood, and dumped into ditches in the outskirts of the citij." 

Onderdonk's Rev. Incidents of Suffolk and Kings Counties, p. 208. 

.Mr. Jonathan Gillette, a native of West Hartford, Conn., who 
died on the 14th day of March, 1855, aged 93 years, was a pri- 
soner in the Sugar House in Liberty Street, in the year 1780, 
and was confined there for ten months. He says, " Almost every 
(lay the corpse of one, and sometimes five or six were carried out 
for burial They were conveyed to the Bowery, near the Fresh 
Water Pump, where they were interred." 

The place where Mr. Hanfbrd witnessed the burial of the pri- 
soners, was not in any church-yard, but was in the trenches of 
the fortifications, which had been made by the Americans pre- 
vious to the evacuation of New York, in the year 1776, in what 
was then considered the tipper part of the city. It was some- 
where in the neighborhood of where Grand Street now is, but 
may not have been quite so high up. The city was dug full of 
trenches, in and around it, and into these the prisoners were 
thrown, and were scarcely furnished earth, much less coffins for 
their burials. The British did not dig graves for the prisoners, 
;ind hence were not usually inclined to bury them in church-yards 
or regular burying places, but threw them in wherever it was 
convenient. The mode of Intrial of those who died in the prison 
ships is well known. The remains of those who died in the pri- 
sons on land were not more favored than they. During the oc-. 
cupation of the city by the British, much mortality prevailed 
among the troops, and the burials said to have been made in 
Trinity Church yard, were probably those of British soldiers, or 
from the Tory regiments. Mr. Hanford had no knowledge of 
any American prisoners having been buried there by the British, 



and always scouted at the idea. Having- been a prisoner lor 
fourteen months, he certainly would have known if such had been 
the fact. When the troubles with England commenced, the 
Episcopal Churches almost unanimously took sides with the mo- 
ther country, and were friends of the British, and when the City 
of New York was taken possession ■ 'f, they were recognized as 
loyal branches of the Established Church of England, and as such 
were protected from profanation, while the churches of other de- 
nominations were converted into store-houses, hospitals, prisons, 
riding-schools, and even stables for British cavalry. The British 
being in possession of the Episcopal grounds, they were not at 
all likely to desecrate them by making them the receptacle of the 
rebel dead. They were not likely to honor or £avor those, re- 
garded as criminals and outlaws by a burial iu consecrated ground 
whom, while living, they had starved and ill treated, and whom 
they had allowed to languish and die in vile, pestilential prisons 
The churches themselves were opposed to such burials. They did 
not want their grounds filled with the bodies of those who, while 
living, were in open rebellion not only against their king, but also 
the Established Church. Under these circumstances, the British 
certainly would not select such spots when the wl.ole city was 
open before them, and would by no means be apt to pay the fee 
for interring bodies there, when they could be buried elsewhere 
for nothing. If a prisoner had Tory intluence enough to insure 
his interment there, the same influence would have insured his 
release from captivity, and from the treatment and mode of life 
which caused or accelerated his decease. 

Jiloreover, Mr. Inglis, the pastor of the church, was himself a 
bitter Tory, and took an active and decided part, as is well 
known, and as the records of the church will show. He would 
have raised both hands against any such desecration. His pray- 
ers for the king were vehement and unceasing, and he refused to 
omit them even during the presence of Washington himself at 



the church, although previously requested so to do by one of that 
General's own officers. Would he, who refused tliis civility to a 
member and a communicant of the church, be at all likely to 
grant an Episcopal burial to a prisoner confined for being a 
rebel, and who died firm and unshaken in his defection ? Those 
noble patriots, those suffering martyrs w^ere not so fovored. No 
soothing words consoled their dying hours ; no tones of pity soft- 
ened their afiflictions, and it may well be believed that no Episco- 
pal services attended their remains to their place of interment. 

The remains which are said to have been discovered in excava- 
ting the ground for the erection of the monument to the Martyrs, 
appearing to have been hastily and promiscuously made, and 
without coffins, were probably the remains of paupers, for that 
ground was used as a Potter's Field for many years before the 
Revolution — in fact as early as 1703 or 1704. "When the Brit- 
ish held possession of the city, they had full control of everything, 
and is it not natural that they would have protected from dese- 
cration the grounds containing their own friends and relatives, 
and grounds attached to and belonging to^ their own Established 
Church ? AVould not their vigilance after the destruction of the 
church by fire, have been still greater than before ? If the 
grounds were then left more open and exposed, is it at all proba- 
ble that they would have been less guarded and protected ? But 
one conclusion, therefore, remains, which is, that the remains of 
those found there ivithoiU coffius were the remains of paupers, 
while those found there tcith coffins were not the relics ol prison- 
ers, for they were uniformly buried without them, and in places 
not consecrated, and not in the heart of the city, but at such 
distances fro-n it as would prevent the residents from being in- 
fected by the effluvia arising from their half-covered bodies while 
in course of decomposition. During the discussion of these ques- 
tions, some years ago, Mr. Hanford was referred to, and he al- 



ways contended that no prisoners were interred by the British 
in the grounds of that church during the Revolution. 

It has been said that the Negro burying ground on the site of 
Stewart's marble store, corner of Broadway and Chambers Street, 
and the Jews' burial-ground, on the location now known as 
Chatham Square, were used as places of interment for American 
prisoners. Such might have been the case, for the British des- 
pised the Jews and their religion, and had no respect whatever 
for either of those burial-places, and if they buried any prisoners 
in either of those localities, they did so with the intention of 
casting a stigma upon them, for they no doubt considered any 
such interments made by them as an indignity and disgrace. 

Before putting the above in type, I sent the manuscript to W. 
B. Hanford, Esq., for inspection, and with its return received 
from him the following letter, which I take the liberty to ap- 
pend : — 

" Franklin, N. Y., Sept. 21, 1863. 
Chas. J. Bttshneli., Esq , 

My Dear Sir ; — Tour favor of the 14th instant is before 
me. * * I have examined the manuscript enclosed, but have no altera- 
tions to suggest. It is, I think, correct as it stands, and will give a just 
view of the facts in relation to the claim of Trinity Church to the honor of 
furnishing a receptacle for deceased prisoners, and will entitle you to the 
gratitude of the public for setting the matter right before them. 
Yours, in Fraternal Regards, 

Wm. B. Hanford." 



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